Pick Me (18 page)

Torture, that’s what. Delicious, excruciating torture, Thea decided as she rolled her head from side to side, her hips rising and falling with his insistent search. His mouth still working her into a frenzy, he lowered one hand from her wrists to her panties, reaching under the thin cotton this time and covering her mound with the full weight of his hand. Her body rose higher, thrusting breasts and hips and chin, and he responded by sliding one finger between the folds to find the bud of her desire once again.

When she teetered at the edge, he released her wrists and let her find him, let her hold the weight and length of him in her hands while he tore off his t-shirt and at last she feasted on the body she’d tentatively touched on that motorcycle, the body she’d only imagined unclothed. Her hands rode up his abdomen, savoring the heat and hardness of him, the concaves and ridges, and watched his erection strain under her touch. When he finally rolled a condom over his pulsing length, she smiled.

“Still want to wait, Doctor?” she whispered.

His answer came in the next instant as he pushed inside her, sliding into her the way she’d craved melting into him. Finally, they were joined, mouth to mouth, body to body. She wrapped her legs around him and squeezed, her hands riding along his back, feeling the heat and power of his hunger as he drove himself deeper and deeper, her own body clenching and releasing in time with his strokes. When she was sure he was ready, he’d slow and torture her all over again, until she felt so deliciously swollen, there was no holding back her surrender. When it came, she thrashed and bucked, feeling like a leaf swept up in a roaring river, helpless in the current of sensation, and she felt his release seconds later, his body seizing under her fingers, rigid and then relaxed.

Spent, they lay entwined, unmoving, hearts racing. Thea looked up at him, lost in the haze of her own craving and the pure joy of her liberation.

All her life, she’d planned, making sure to mold her life into tidy shapes. What would it be like to live in the moment, to leave the future open for the unknown?

She reached up to touch his jaw, the curve of his lower lip. “Was that worth waiting fourteen years for?”

“I’d say yes, but then if I’d known
how
worth it, I wouldn’t have waited fourteen years. If that makes any sense.”

She smiled. “Perfect sense.”

He brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. “Where the hell have you been all my life, Thea Dunn?”

She turned her face so that her lips could find his hand and kissed the meat of his thumb. “After that night,” she said, “when you saved me from wandering the streets, I used to fantasize that you were the one for me, but I never believed it could be right between us.” She turned back to him. “Why didn’t I see it then?”

“Because we were kids. Running away. Thinking we knew what we wanted. Who we were. It takes time.”

“Fourteen years, apparently.”

“I guess some fantasies get better with age.”

“I have a terrible confession,” she said. “I don’t want this to be just a fantasy anymore.”

“Good,” he said, sliding his hands under her head. “Because you know what they say about fantasies, Counselor.”

“What?” she asked, searching his eyes as he tilted her mouth to meet his.

Calder grinned as he came down. “They’re never as good as the real thing.”

THE END

Magnolia Bay Series

If you enjoyed
Pick Me
, you’ll love the other Magnolia Bay stories!

Bet the House
by Erika Marks

Buy now!

Sweet Home Carolina
by Kim Boykin

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Flirting with Forever
by Kim Boykin

Coming July 2014

She’s the One
by Kim Boykin

Coming August 2014

About the Author

Erika Marks
is a women's fiction writer and the author of LITTLE GALE GUMBO, THE MERMAID COLLECTOR, THE GUEST HOUSE and IT COMES IN WAVES (July, 2014). On the long and winding road to becoming published, she worked many different jobs, including carpenter, cake decorator, art director, and illustrator. But if pressed, she might say it was her brief tenure with a match-making service in Los Angeles after college that set her on the path to writing love stories (not that there isn't romance in frosting or power tools!) A native New Englander, she now makes her home in Charlotte, NC, with her husband, a native New Orleanian who has taught her to make a wicked gumbo, and their two little mermaids.
For more on Erika’s books, visit her website at
http://www.erikamarksauthor.com

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http://southernbornbooks.com